Make Your Own Stained Glass Leaves

Fall….. the time of year when the trees change from a mass of green to a beautiful display of colors. Now, if your children are anything like my country kids, well during the fall they have to pick up what seems like EVERY beautifully colored leaf they find and attempt to bring it in the house. I say attempt, because around here, I have had to put a stop to bringing large numbers of real leaves into the house.

Why? Well because, the leaves get left around and dry out. Eventually the dog or cats find them and try to eat them making a mess. Leaves just collect in weird places, like in the furniture!  Just over all a messy headache. I love that my children enjoy the beauty of nature, I do! But to be honest, I only want to vacuum, let’s say twice a day, no more.

So what is a mama to do when the young long for beautiful fall leaves? Craft some! This simple project really does add a touch of color and fun to a room without the perpetual mess of real leaves. So let’s get started……

I did allow one leaf in the house to use as a template for this project. After tracing the pattern of the leaf on to fall colored construction paper, we cut them out. Next we folded our cut out leaves in half and cut out the centers to give us a picture frame effect. Now for the mess, we tore pieces of tissue paper up so we could use it to create the stained class effect. Of course some of those little pieces got everywhere and I had to vacuum, again. I vacuum a lot around here!

Using clear contact paper, we put the frame on it and then filled the “frame” in with torn tissue paper. Once the tissue paper was in, we put a second piece of contact paper on the back to seal it in. Next we simply cut around the the leaf shape (leaving a small edge) to get ride of the extra contact paper. We used scotch tape and hung the leaves in the windows. The leaves look wonderful with the sun shining in through them! I must say, seeing the leave makes me smile, since not only did my son make them, but I will NEVER have to vacuum them up! And I am really getting tired of vacuuming………..

38 thoughts on “Make Your Own Stained Glass Leaves

  1. Perfect! I found this at the Homeacre Hop. I tried a melted crayon stained glass leaf project last fall, but breaking up the crayons was tedious, and my son couldn't really help with melting the crayons… so it was basically a project that I did instead of my three year old! These look much more manageable and age appropriate. Thanks. 🙂

  2. What a fun fall craft! I just pinned this and will be featuring it this week at Meaningful Mama. Thanks so much for linking up at Mom's Library. I hope you'll be there this week too.

  3. These are so cute I can not wait to make some with my son. Plus like you I do not like to vacuum so thank you Jesus for the hard wood floors we have But we have to sweep multiple times a day which stinks.

  4. What a perfect craft for my grandchildren. They are coming this weekend and I love to find fun things we can do together. Tahnks for sharing.

  5. Neat and simple idea. I think my children are a little old for this, but maybe I will remember this when we have grandchildren.

    Thanks for sharing this with us on the Homestead Blog Hop.

Comments are closed.